Author Thomas Hardy and Educational Reform :: Biography Biographies Essays

Author Thomas Hardy and commandal ReformBritain did not progress to a national system of education until the grade 1870. Until this time, education for the rabble was not centralized, but separated by class. Local authorities, philanthropists, and religiously machine-accessible societies usually provided education for the poor. Meanwhile, middle-class and upper-class children were either sent to popular enlightens or home-tutored. Not until the year 1862 and the formation of the New Castle electric charge would education start to become more standardized, though slowly. The reformists argued the necessity of teaching rudimentary skills in basic subjects, especially to the working class. fosterage at home became less common, and women were no longer taught only domesticity, but academician studies as well. Despite all of these advances, it was not until the year 1870, when the Elementary Education Act was passed, that education became standardized in England. Not only was a secular national system set up but, by the year 1880, school attendance had be come obligatory for anyone under the mature of ten. Affluent children attended denominational and public schools, while less moneyed children attended Englands national schools. By the end of the century attention was whence shifted to secondary education. The majority of Thomas Hardys education took place prior to any attempt at standardization, and therefore, the brunt of this responsibility fell upon his mother and acquaintances he make as a small boy and young man. In the downfall of 1848, at the age of eight, Hardy entered his first school at the Stinsford Parish, where he versed mathematics and geography. It was run by the National nightspot for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Establi shed Church. Hardys mother, as always, was concerned with and had more intriguing plans for Hardys education and supplemented his readings. She withdrew Hardy from the conformist s chool, and in 1850, she enrolled him at a school in Dorchester, run by the noncon formist British and Foreign School Society under the respectable headmaster, Isaac Last. At Last s school, Hardy learned Latin and mathematics. At the age of 15, he began learning French as well, and in 1856, at the age of 16, Hardy became an apprentice to magic trick Hicks, an couturier in Dorchester. During his apprenticeship, Hardy became friends with Horace Moule, who served Hardy as an unofficial tutor, and influenced his reading. In April of 1862, at age 22, Hardy decided to move to London, and with the help of a family friend, John Norton, got a job as an architect with Arthur Bloomfield.